With a click of our heels...

By Alison Willmore on 06/30/2006

...away we go! Well, nowhere in particular, but as we head out for the long weekend, a few random quotes from other critics (and critics of critics) to ponder.

Roger Ebert does A.O. Scott doing Anthony Lane literature snark on "The Devil Wears Prada":

"The Devil Wears Prada" is based on the best-selling novel by Lauren Weisberger, which oddly enough captures the exact tone, language and sophistication of the books of my childhood: There was nowhere to wipe my sweaty palms except for the suede Gucci pants that hugged my thighs and hips so tightly they'd both begun to tingle within minutes of my securing the final button. This novel was on the New York Times best-seller list for six months, and has been published in 27 countries. I hope some of the translators left the word "both" out of that sentence.

Taking on the same film, Ella Taylor at the LA Weekly finds something to treasure in the finale:

What a pity, then, that in the end, "The Devil Wears Prada" flabs out in all the usual ways, turning every major player into a softie and bestowing on the villain-in-chief a maternal streak that, however warped, strains all belief. Well, almost all: There’s got to be some encouraging malice left in a woman who would sic the likes of Lauren Weisberger onto The Village Voice. In the book she ends up where she belongs — freelancing for Seventeen, and something Conde-Nasty called The Buzz.

At Like Anna Karina's Sweater, Filmbrain responds to Armond White's review of "The Road To Guantanamo," wondering "where does film criticism end, and knee-jerk reactionary political diatribe begin?"

At Salon, Andrew O'Hehir notes that this may be the most upbeat downbeat indie film summer in a long white, before recounting some encouraging box office numbers:

We're bullish on America yet again this week here at Beyond the Multiplex world HQ. OK, that's a lie -- as the latest crop of indie films demonstrates, our country is trapped in a slowly worsening nightmare in Iraq, and its energy policy (try to say that phrase without snickering) is pretty much being set in the boardrooms of Big Oil. But, hey. It's shaping up as a terrific summer for movies, even if you have only the vaguest idea that somebody, for some reason, made a new Superman film.

And of that Superman film, Matt Zoller Seitz, returning to the New York Press, writes nicely:

The film’s most haunting scene finds Superman floating above the earth, eavesdropping on layers of conversation, then becoming overwhelmed and shutting them all out. He could be a two-fisted cousin of the angels from "Wings of Desire." He feels guilt over needing not to be needed, if only for an instant. He’s an extraordinary ordinary man—the better angel of our nature.

We'll be back Wednesday.

+ The Devil Wears Prada (RogerEbert.com)
+ En Vogue (LA Weekly)
+ Film criticism or Op-Ed piece: Armond White and the smugness of torture victims (Like Anna Karina's Sweater)
+ Beyond the Multiplex (Salon)
+ ANGEL OF AMERICA (NY Press)